With the fast development of hardware technology, the abilities of an electronic device, such as a mobile terminal, to process data and to store information are remarkably improved, by which users can enjoy kinds of multimedia applications anytime and anywhere. As an example, many new models of mobile phones integrate MP3 player and/or radio, which can provide music and broadcast programs to the users.
Conventionally, users of an electronic device having a music database can browse or retrieve music stored in the music database, and find out, if needed, a piece of music, by entering descriptive keywords, such as title, performer and composer of the piece of music, to listen or to download it to other devices.
When users browse or retrieve one or more pieces of music from a music database stored in the electronic device, a menu or a list of pieces of music is displayed on the display unit of the electronic device. The menu or list shows, usually in text mode, a large number of titles, names of performers, names of composers etc. of the pieces of music to be selected. The users need to select what they want from the menu or list based on a certain rule such as alphabet order. Usually, the users have to check many pages or screens in the menu or list to find the right piece. Therefore, it is inconvenient for the users to find the exactly relevant information.
And, if users want to search a piece of music expressing a kind of mood such as happy, sad, sorrowful or the like they never listen to or they are not familiar with, they can hardly use the above menu or list to search out the right piece of music they want. Listening to the pieces of music one by one is not advisable because it is time consuming to check the melody of every piece of music, which in some sense depends on the length of the music. Even if only the major melody of every piece of music is listened to, it will take tens of seconds for one piece of music.